Finish line voices: Marathon bombing stories from the North Shore

Residents from all over the North of Boston area were near the scene when Monday's horrific marathon bombings occurred, and some of them shared their dramatic stories with us.

Staff reports

Residents from all over the North of Boston area were near the scene when Monday's horrific marathon bombings occurred, and some of them shared their dramatic stories with us.

IPSWICH: ‘I saw the window blow out’

“The first bomb was 50 yards away, if that, on other side of finish line,” said Drew Marc-Aurele, of Ipswich, who was waiting for his son, Jeffrey, and two other extended family members to finish.

“I saw the window blow out,” he said. “I thought a generator blew out or something. Seconds later the other bomb went off and then I knew something was going on. Terrorism or something.”

Marc-Aurele wanted to keep his family together, which wasn’t easy given cell phone service shut down almost immediately. Then texts started coming through. Jeffrey texted his mother on a borrowed phone and through additional texts the clan gathered near the family car, parked near the Boston Common, and headed home.

The whole process took about 20 minutes to get everyone to the car.

“It was draining to say the least,” said Marc-Aurele, who was amazed at how quickly police and volunteers controlled the panic and cleared the finish line.

“People started running. There was a woman with blood on her face on the sidewalk. It was just terrible,” said Marc-Aurele. “At first it seemed it would be a panic. But they cleared things very quickly. The grandstands emptied in minutes. Then they brought in the wheelchairs and then the ambulances.

“It was amazing how quickly they were able to move people out of there and get the ambulances in.”

WAKEFIELD: ‘That race was sacred’

Fred Emilianowicz, of Wakefield, was in Boston to photograph the marathon runners’ joyous expressions as they crossed the finish line.

“It went from a feeling of joy and celebration to horror. I was stunned,” Emilianowicz said, recalling the moments of the explosions.

“I can honestly say I was frightened,” he said. “I was aware of the world we live in. But I could not believe it was happening at the Boston Marathon. That race was sacred in my mind.”

Emilianowicz and his photography equipment were set up in a grandstand about five yards from the finish line. He was focused on the emotional expressions of the runners’ faces as they completed the race when the first explosion happened.

“There was absolutely no doubt it was a bomb,” he said.

And then a second explosion could be heard from down the block.

“When the second explosion occurred, I grabbed my stuff and decided to get out of there,” Emilianowicz said. “I couldn’t be sure that I wasn’t sitting on a bomb where I was.”

READING: ‘I’ll never forget the panic’

David DeFilippo, a Reading resident, made it across the Boston Marathon finish line and was walking casually to the water stand when he heard an explosion. He looked back and saw a lot of smoke, with flames shooting up everywhere. His immediate thoughts were of his family.

“The sound was so intense that I first thought about where my wife and two of my kids were,” said DeFilippo, 47, referring to his wife, Gina, and their children Gianna, 9, and Joseph, 6.

“I was hoping they weren’t at the finish line. My wife never wants to be near the finish line, because of the crowds, and I was hoping that would be the case this time. We talked about meeting up with each other in front of the CVS, and that’s where I found them.

“I’ll never forget the panic on everybody’s face, and the image of my kids hysterically crying,” he said.

DeFilippo said he never thought his kids would be witnesses to a terrorist attack, especially at an event like the Boston Marathon.

“The Boston Marathon is such a beautiful event, and there are no better running fans like here in Boston. It’s just senseless, and for what?” he said.

MARBLEHEAD: ‘It was complete chaos’

When the two bombs exploded seconds apart in Copley Square at Boston Marathon’s finish line just before 3 p.m. on Monday, Marbleheader Leslie Bailey, 38, was sitting in the bleachers on Boylston Street waiting for her husband, runner Damian Bailey, 37.

“I was in the stands waiting for him along with his best friend when the first explosion went off, and we were literally right across the street from the first explosion; we stood up on the bleachers,” said Leslie. “Ten seconds later, the second explosion went off, and people were screaming immediately; it was complete chaos, just complete chaos.”

According to Leslie, Damian was a little under a mile away from the finish line when the explosions occurred, and, as she put it, “a wall of runners began coming his way.”

Without his cell phone and with lines jammed, it was impossible for them to find each other right away, Bailey said. Amid the carnage and pandemonium, roughly 45 minutes after the deadly blasts went off, they worked their way through the shell-shocked crowds to find each other.

“He didn’t know what happened. He didn’t know if I was OK, and I didn’t know where he was either,” said Leslie.

Eventually they were united and made their way on foot to a friend’s house on Marlborough Street. They stayed there for more than an hour before heading to their car in the Boston Common parking garage and driving back to Marblehead.

Running in his second Boston Marathon, Damian turned a rare blood-cancer diagnosis in 2010 into an opportunity to challenge himself. After regaining his health in 2011, he completed in his first Boston Marathon in 2012, a feat he had hoped to repeat this year. Over the past two years, according to Leslie, Damian has raised $70,000 for the Leukemia & Lymphoma Society.

“I’m currently going through treatment,” said Leslie. “It was a sad day. It was meant to be a beautiful day, a day of celebration.”

MEDFORD: ‘Almost like a sonic boom’

Medford resident Richard Wherry just completed his debut marathon when the pair of explosions near the finish line sent shockwaves through the streets.

“It was a bit of a shocker,” said Wherry, 44, still shaken from the days events. “I don’t know what to say. My family was in the stands two minutes before that. So I was very concerned with their safety.”

Wherry hadn't even picked up his medal when the initial blast hit less than a block away. For a brief moment, he thought the explosion might have been part of the show.

“I thought that maybe someone had [fired] those cannons you hear at some events,” he said. “But it was extremely loud, almost like a sonic boom. It was loud enough that it left you wondering if it was really that or something else.

“I saw tons of smoke from the first [blast] and the fireball from the second one, and you knew at that point that these were explosions,” Wherry said.

The West Medford resident, who wound up helping remove barricades so officials could reach the injured, was instructed to head to the Westin Hotel to pick up his personal belongings. That’s where he was reunited with his family.

“I did this for charity,” said Wherry, who ran for uAspire, an organization that benefits disadvantaged kids. “And a lot of people did a lot of good things to raise funds and did a lot of training. It’s just terrible to see something like this happen and them not to be able to complete what they’ve been working for for a long time.”

And though he never got to pick up his medal, Wherry was presented with something arguably even more special when the family got safely home: a homemade medal from his daughter Audrey, 8.

MELROSE: ‘It was mayhem’

Michael Ferrari, of Melrose, had just crossed the finish line when the explosions sent shockwaves through the streets.

“It was mayhem,” said Ferrari, 24.

“Maybe three minutes after I finished the first bomb went off,” said Ferrari, 24, who was standing about 100 to 150 feet away from the blast. “I saw the whole thing. I saw the first and the second one, tons of black smoke, people running crazy, people with half their legs off. It was crazy.

“I turned around and saw all the black smoke and I knew something was definitely going on,” Ferrari said. “And then literally five seconds later the second bomb went off and people started running. I was literally jogging as fast as I can, even though I just ran a marathon, I was trying to move as fast as I can.”

A short time before, Melrose resident Patty Rushton and her children were at the finish line to greet her husband, Jeffrey Rushton, when the bombs went off. Patty Rushton said she heard two explosions.

She spoke to Jeffrey through the barriers after he crossed the finish line, but they lost track of each other as chaos broke out.

“I couldn’t catch him, people were running at him,” she said. “He’d just run 26 miles and now he had to run again.”

SAUGUS: ‘A surreal scene’

Saugus resident Bob Catinazzo still had a few miles to go to complete his fifth Boston Marathon when rumblings began about bombs going off at the end of the course. He runs without a cell phone, but a fellow member of the Boston Children’s Hospital team next to him kept receiving ominous text messages.

“It was a surreal scene,” Catinazzo said. “A police officer came over and told us the race is over.”

Catinazzo managed to catch up with his wife and son and was relieved to find out they escaped injury. The trio then spent the next several hours trying to get to the Westin Copley where the family truck was parked.

“They weren’t letting people into the Westin, so we went over to the T stop and it was shut down,” Catinazzo said. “We just wanted to get out of there, so we jumped into a cab and $50 later we were home.”

What really troubles Catinazzo is how a senseless tragedy marred a beautiful day where people raise money for great institutions such as Boston Children’s Hospital.

“To me this is the most unique day in the country. Where else do you run a marathon on a Monday?” Catinazzo said. “Now it’s changed. It won’t ever be the same.”

SALEM: ‘Everyone was running around and crying’

The first bomb went off barely a minute after Salem runner Beth O'Grady crossed the finish line.

"I had many friends who had wanted to come and cheer me on today, and for whatever reason I told them not to come. If they had come, then they would have been standing just where the bomb went off," O'Grady said. "I had just crossed the line, and there were lots of runners around, some of them cramping up from just finishing the race and all in pain. Now they are being evacuated. They can barely move. It was pandemonium."

"I heard two explosions ... Everyone was running around and crying. Our cell phones were on the buses with the runner's bags, so no one could get calls or reassure their families they were all right. I was in agony, but I still went straight to the bus and was able to get my bag."

For O'Grady, despite her pain, there was little relief. No transportation was available for runners, and on Monday O'Grady found herself waiting at a hotel to make sure all of her running colleagues checked in and were safe.

"I am definitely in shock, kind of in a fog,” she said Monday afternoon. “It was such a horrific scene. I hope as long as I live I never see anything like that again."

STONEHAM: ‘Someone was definitely watching over me’

The captain of the Stoneham Theatre’s marathon team, Bradley Jensen, crossed the finish line at exactly 2:50 p.m. with his mother, who'd joined him to finish the race -- roughly 10 seconds before the first explosion occurred on Boylston Street.

“Once we crossed the finish line I was just about to hug my mom and we felt a boom,” he said. “We both felt it and saw smoke behind us. At first I thought it might be fireworks going off, or maybe the clock toward had fallen over.”

Jensen said people were standing still after the first explosion, mostly wondering what had happened, but after the second “boom” the reality started to sink in.

“At that point we all knew something was very wrong, and people just started running,” he said.

Jensen said he was already emotionally and physically drained from the experience, this having been his first marathon. He looked to his mother for guidance during those first few seconds.

“I’ve never even run a 5K before and it was already hard to move, but when the explosions happened I kept asking my mom what we should do,” he said. “She is a nurse and she just held my hand and got me moving again.”

Jensen and his entire family were able to get out of the city shortly after everything happened, and he realizes how lucky it was that none of them were hurt.

“It all happened so fast,” he said. “Within a few minutes we were all together and got out of there safely. Someone was definitely watching over me.”

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